MCAD standards battle shapes over spatial's solids-modeler

Electronic News, March 16, 1992 by Gerry Khermouch

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The battle for supremacy in the mechanical CAD arena has moved onto a new front, as a growing number of vendors and users add their support to a solids-modeling engine developed by Spatial Technology Inc. while competing MCAD vendors beef up their efforts to develop and market proprietary engines, in one case as a competing "standard."

At stake is a large volume of software and related hardware business at such major accounts as Ford Motor Co. and Boeing, and the possibility that major shifts in market share could occur as the outcome of the battle is determined.

Executives on both sides of the debate also acknowledge that the easy terms on which Boulder, Col.-based Spatial is licensing its source code holds the potential to allow the Japanese to make rapid strides in adding those features to their own software, narrowing or even closing the comfortable lead that U.S. and European firms have enjoyed in the MCAD arena. Spatial officials make no secret of their expectation that the Japanese shortly will comprise their strongest base of licensees, although they argue that, at least so far, the Japanese efforts to implement the code are aimed primarily at their domestic market.

Should the geometric modeling engine, styled ACIS, gain ascendancy, it also holds the prospect of launching a hardware sub-specialty analogous to that of graphics accelerators or floating point coprocessors, as ACIS functionality is committed to silicon. John R. Rowley, a former Intel official who is Spatial Technology's president and chief executive, said discussions already are under way with three Japanese suppliers and two U.S. workstation manufacturers on the possibility of their providing a "silicon assist" to the ACIS technology, although actual deployment likely won't occur for another couple of years. He declined to identify the firms.

The issue of where solids-modeling technology is going was a central point of debate at the CAD/CAM strategy workshop sponsored here earlier this month by market researcher Daratech Inc., as CAD vendors defended their approaches and the president of Catia-developer Dassault Systemes S.A., which has not adopted ACIS, warned Mr. Rowley from the floor that he was essentially handing over the West's edge in CAD/CAM to the Japanese.

At the conference, it was clear that the ACIS technology has gathered momentum in recent months, with Hewlett-Packard demonstrating a new SolidDesigner offering based on ACIS, while both Autodesk and IBM's micro-based Cadam unit discussed plans to incorporawte the technology in future offerings. On the user side, Ford Motor Co. offered the technology a strong endorsement, a few weeks after it purchased a license for use in its internally developed and supported Product Design Graphics System, which numbers 4,000 users among Ford and its suppliers. The auto maker plans to incorporate the ACIS geometric modeler in PDGS next quarter.

Analysts said the endorsement by Ford poses a particular challenge to Prime Computer's Computervision unit, for whom Ford is a major customer but which continues to maintain a commitment to its own solids-modeling solution, CV-DORS, which it is promoting as a competing "standard" within the industry.

At the Daratech conference, Prime president and chief executive Jack Shields said that to ease concerns of competing vendors about using DORS, Prime would consider spinning off its core technologies development effort into a separate entity. While DORS is one of the few systems, like ACIS, that currently can handle such complex tasks as non-manifold topology, analysts doubt the firm will have an easy time convincing competitors to adopt the software, and Mr. Rowley dismissed its potential as long as Prime would continue to hold an equity stake in the effort.

However, Daratech president Charles Foundyller warned that "I believe Jack (Shields) is sincere, and Spatial would be ill-advised to trivialize DORS. If they do, they're making a big mistake." Mr. Foundyller added that a number of other CAD/CAM vendors with credible solids-modeling packages must be wrestling with the same difficult question of whether to keep their technology close to the vest or make it available to others.

Also keeping their distance from ACIS are EDS' recently acquired Unigraphics unit, whose Parasolids package was developed by some of the same engineers now working on ACIS for Spatial, and France's Dassault Systems, developer of the Catia packages that are widely sold on IBM and other hardware platforms.

In fact, it was Dassault president Francis Bernard who publicly questioned Spatial's strategy of trying to develop as broad a base of licensees as possible on reasonable terms, given the alacrity with which such major Japanese firms as Toyota Caelum have jumped on board.

"I'm afraid you help the Japanese to compete against us" in the CAD/CAM arena, Mr. Bernard warned. "John, I'll tell you you're taking a very big risk. I hope you do not make a mistake," he said.